Morristown's Literacy Volunteers Use Personalization To Help

MORRISTOWN, NJ—Volunteers at a Morristown nonprofit dedicated to helping adults learn to read and write have not let the pandemic stop them.

Literacy Volunteers of Morris County in Morristown provides free tutoring services to adults in the area to learn to read and write English, as well as GED prep. The program also teaches other skills, such applying for driver's license or writing a resume.

"These are real-world skills," Leon said, "maybe they're struggling at work because their emails aren't polished. Maybe they can't make a doctor's appointment. We teach them all of that."

Prior to the pandemic, students and tutors were matched up geographically and would meet in a public place. Leon said that many of Literacy Volunteers' students had limited access to technology or high speed internet service when the quarantine began. But she soon found a solution: Personalization.

"It really threw our students for a loop," Leon said, "but we decided to contact each one and personalize their program based on their level of technology. If you could do Zoom, great. If you only had a phone, fine. We worked it out together."

Dave Mazurowski, who taught in the English department at the U.S. Air Force Academy before a career as an airline pilot, began volunteering in January. He said although the idea is to help, he gets a lot from what's he's doing with Literacy Volunteers.

"It's just kind of a way to give back to the community," said Mazurowski, who recently retired from the airline. "It's an amazing program, and working with the students is kind of the highlight of my day."

Mazurowski said the job got more complicated once covid struck, but the student he's been working with recently showed tremendous improvement.

"That really felt good," Mazurowski said, "He listened to what I had to say and he went out and hit a home run."

Leon, a former lawyer, said although the future is uncertain, the personalized online model of teaching would probably become part of their operation, even if in-person tutoring resumes. What is certain, she said, is that helping the local community is what's kept her at Literary Volunteers for more than 20 years.

"It restores your faith in humanity," she said, "because you have volunteers willing to give out their time to help, and students working so hard. It's an energy and synergy we have of people working together."